


Not a cry that you hear at night

by kira892



Category: DCU
Genre: Gen, examining alfred's grief and how he might have dealt with jason coming back, post under the red hood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 22:13:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10580544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kira892/pseuds/kira892
Summary: Even sitting down, the silhouette was easily threatening; almost as huge as Bruce and it was clearly armed but Alfred knew even before the click of a lighter sparked a flame to illuminate the face, whose it was.





	

**Author's Note:**

> There's different versions of this song and though it's not the one that this fic talks about, I listened to the version by Daniel Moore and the Apollo chorus on repeat while writing this, which is [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQII7vl2NBE%20) in case you want to listen to it. It's quite beautiful. 
> 
> This was inspired by a conversation I had months ago with my friend Jordo that she probably doesn't even remember anymore because it was so long ago haha. I'm so sorry I'm slow, but this one is for you Jordo!! and all the wonderful Jason peeps on twitter. I see y'all laying on the sads and angst on that boy a lot and i rarely join the party but I appreciate and enjoy the heck out of ALL of it.

_Maybe there's a God above_  
_All I've ever learned from love_  
_Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you_  
_And it's not a cry that you hear at night_  
_It's not somebody who's seen the light_  
_It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah_

There was an old piano in the attic.

It’s a petite but beautiful upright; ivory white with polished gold pedals and delicate hand carved filigrees decorating its sides. It was passed down four generations of Waynes before Thomas’ grandmother redecorated the drawing room it had originally been sitting in and had the thing moved up to the attic where it was promptly forgotten.

Jason used to love that piano.

The first time Alfred found him huddled under it, Jason was only twelve and had been barely three months into his residency in the manor. He hadn’t been happy about being found, replying to his question of ‘is everything alright?’ with a brusque “Yeah.” before getting up and hurrying past him and back downstairs. It had been dark but in the brief second when Jason passed the beam of the flashlight in his hand, Alfred noticed that his eyes had been suspiciously shiny.

He was wise enough to give Jason his space and let him be the next few times he saw him stealthily making his way up to the attic. But when three times turned to four, then to eight, Alfred decided that perhaps space wasn’t what Jason needed.

Jason responded to his concern much like he did the first time. Except he hadn’t gotten up to vanish, merely turned his head and waited until Alfred took the hint. The fact that he didn’t leave or asked him to was taken as an encouraging sign and the next time, Alfred pushed just a little bit harder, coming up to the attic with a tray of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and hot chocolate. Jason declined the invitation to come down to the kitchen and eat them with him but when Alfred left the tray up there with him, Jason stopped him on his way down and gave him a hesitant smile and a thank you.

The same thing happened a few more times until eventually, about half an hour after he left the cookies and hot chocolate with Jason, he appeared in the kitchen just as Alfred was about to retire to his room for the night. The plate was empty and Jason beamed up at him, a bit shy.

“Do you have any more cookies?”

It was almost easy after that. Jason still liked to seclude himself in the attic, curling up on the dusty floor under the creaky ivory keys of the piano like it was an awning sheltering him from a storm. Sometimes he still declined company but half the time, he would let himself be bribed away from his little spot to join Alfred in the kitchen for a late evening snack.

Gradually, he opened up to him, relaying all his thoughts, fears and worries to Alfred over plates of cookies, scones and muffins. The sharp words of awful stories from his life before them were softened ever so slightly in Jason’s mouth with countless cups of tea and hot chocolate.  Alfred listened to them all, offering whatever wisdom he can where it was appropriate and his silence and a comforting touch when Jason told him something that no words could soothe.

Eventually, Jason told him why out of all the places in the manor, he picked the dusty piano upstairs to hide under.

“The only Christmas I remember that’s anywhere close to good was when we were living in a shelter. It was nice having a place to stay for the winter. This one even had decent heating.” Jason paused to smile at the keys turned yellow by age, drawing a line through the sheet of dust that’s accumulated over them with his finger.

“The place was really small though. There was a chapel that’s a quarter the size of my bathroom here and we slept there. I called dibs on the piano bench. It was my bed in the night except when there was mass. The lady who came to play the piano never kicked me out. She even let me push the pedals during the songs and sometimes she gave me candy. On Christmas Eve, she gave me a box of new clothes and an expensive looking blanket.Then, mom fell off the wagon again.” slowly, he hits a few keys and Alfred recognized Cohen’s Hallelujah through the hesitant movements of fingers that struggled to remember the melody.

“We were back on the streets by New Year’s Eve.”

The wistful look on Jason’s face had been so jarring to see on someone so young.

That night, Alfred moved Jason, himself and their tray of chocolate biscotti and oolong tea to the west drawing room instead of the kitchen. The tea and biscotti were left on the hood of the baby grand that no one has touched since the passing of Thomas and Martha Wayne to go cold while Alfred taught Jason the basics.

Jason only learned how to play one song fully before he died.

The nice lady who played the piano played Hallelujah the one Christmas that wasn’t horrible. Alfred spent the night of Jason’s funeral up in the attic, staring at the dusty old piano. The line that Jason drew across the keys many months before had gathered dust again but the faint impression of it was still visible. It was such a small thing, so subtle. Yet it weighed on his heart like a concrete block.   

He put his hands to the keys and played Hallelujah until his fingertips erased that small line that would remind him of the gigantic loss they had suffered.

He had gone up to the attic a lot in the months following the funeral. In the dark stillness between too late and too early, his eyes made boy-shaped shadows out of dust and old furniture, as if he just stared hard enough, one of them would move, walk into a beam of moonlight and give him Jason back. None of them ever did of course and for years, all Alfred had were ghosts. It became  a habit. His trips up to the attic lessened in frequency as time grew but never ceased. It gave him some comfort even if the pang in his heart every time he saw the empty space under the keys never went away. It was a bittersweet thing; realizing that without intending to, he had claimed Jason’s safe space as his. It perhaps ventured into the realm of obsessiveness but he never gave it up. Bruce had his glass case, he could have this.

Then Jason came back.

========================

The night he heard footsteps above and carefully made his way up there with shotgun at the ready and comm on, ready to contact Bruce or any of the children if necessary and found a large, hunched shape under the piano, for a second Alfred found himself almost wishing it was still just a ghost.

Even sitting down, the silhouette was easily threatening; almost as huge as Bruce and it was clearly armed but Alfred knew even before the click of a lighter sparked a flame to illuminate the face, whose it was.

This was the first time he’s seeing Jason in person since his return and it was odd that he had dreamt about it a million times and yet none of it had prepared him for the real thing. His face was bruised and a bit bloody, the features older, more rugged. The eyes were still just as blue but entirely different, colder and a lot more haunted. Something in him broke the second they met his because no matter how different they were, no matter how different it all was,  it was still unmistakably Jason.

There were so many things he could say, so many things he wanted to say but what ended up coming out of his mouth was,

“I don’t suppose you’d like to join me for some tea. Perhaps a small bite to eat as well.”

What he expected from Jason, he wasn’t sure. Animosity? Frostiness? Indifference perhaps. The unreadable stare Jason gave him had him betting on the latter until Jason’s eyes carefully dropped down to the shotgun he was holding. The hand that held the lighter up to his face moved to gesture towards it and the shifting light made his eyes look deeper set, threw the bags under them into sharp relief. He looked so much older than he should be, so tired.

“Why would you want me to do that?”

He’s heard the Red Hood speak before, through surveillance tapes and the footage from Bruce’s cowl camera. Jason’s voice sounded just a tad deeper in real life and less cold when it wasn’t speaking to Bruce or Dick.

“Well quite frankly Master Jason, you look like you need it.”

Jason’s brows rose and slowly, a small sardonic smile appeared. When he said nothing, Alfred made a move toward the stairs.

“I assure you, we would be just as unsupervised as we always were. Though you’re a smart boy and I am sure you already knew that.” Otherwise he wouldn’t be here.

Jason held his gaze for several long moments and Alfred stared back, unflinching. He had been the first to say that this was not the Jason they knew but Bruce had left and returned many times and came back each time a different person during his long, gruelling journey to becoming Batman. If years of dealing with that had granted him anything, let it help him now.

“I’m afraid I do not have any fresh cookies at hand but there are some left over biscotti in the pantry.”

Jason watched him for a few more seconds, threw one last glance at the shotgun and sighed quietly to himself with a small shake of his head.

With just the barest of hesitation, Alfred gestured towards the stairs and raised his brows at Jason expectantly.

Jason muttered something under his breath and silently got to his feet.

  


Jason didn’t talk much; he barely said a word beyond complementing the biscotti and asking for more when he ate everything that was left inside the half empty box. If he dared to assume that he still knew anything about him, Alfred would say that he had a few guesses as to why Jason was there but when asked, Jason’s only response to the question was a quiet shrug of those massive shoulders. God he’d grown. It was a fact that simultaneously made him proud and deeply sad.

Jason moved to take a sip of the strong earl grey that Alfred brewed for them and startled when he realized his cup was empty. Alfred filled his cup without thinking and was startled himself when Jason offered him a quiet “Thanks.” before hastily correcting himself with “Thank you.”

It was a habit that Alfred had instilled in all of the boys, beginning way back with Bruce and hearing Jason say it again made his chest ache with something that was equal parts fondness and agony.

Jason looked surprised at himself and he barked out a rough little chuckle. “You can kill the boy but not the manners I guess.”

When Alfred said nothing to that, Jason snuck a glance at him and smirked. “Too soon?”

The playful smirk made him look years younger and under the same soft orange light that had shone down upon both of them when he was a boy, this estranged, battered and dangerous creature looked exactly like the Jason he raised. It hit him with a warped sense of nostalgia so strong, words caught in Alfred’s throat. His lips flattened into a thin line, wary of speaking and chasing away this budding sense of familiarity that had begun to creep into this strange encounter. He let a few seconds pass then he shook his head, picking up his own cup of tea to take a sip.

“Drink your tea Master Jason.”

The stranger who was starting to slowly turn into the boy he once knew said nothing but drank his tea like he asked and Alfred could almost swear that when he looked at him over the rim of his cup, those haunted blue eyes seemed to have thawed ever so slightly.

How that encounter ended, he had few guesses but reality saw none of them come to fruition. It didn’t turn into a kidnapping, theft, assault or murder, Jason didn’t even vanish the second Alfred turned his back to put the china in the sink. He stood up, thanked Alfred for the food and without meeting his eyes or waiting for a response, calmly walked out of the kitchen.

It made the whole meeting even more surreal than it already was and left him wondering if he had dreamt up the entire thing the following morning.

The empty boxes stacked on the counter with stray crumbs of biscotti still caught in their corners and the empty cups in the sink told him otherwise. Alfred had stared at them, still unsure what to make of it all.

In many years, the amount of times hope had ever rewarded him with anything other than defeat and despair could perhaps be tallied with the fingers of one hand.

That never stopped him from feeling it though.

=====================================

“I still say we should put _some_ form of restraint on him.”

Alfred ignored the words, firmly nudging Damian away from the cot to check the monitors. Damian only allowed himself to be moved about an inch still bent over, staring warily at the guest he and Dick had brought in under unfortunate circumstances into the cave this evening.

He lay still and pale, under heavy sedation and injected with a few other drugs to flush out the toxic storm clouding his system. The damage he’d sustained and was currently fighting against was definitely greater on the inside. Outside, Alfred only had to patch up a dislocated shoulder and a few bruised ribs.There was also heavy bruising around the face and one fairly deep but not life threatening cut.

Alfred glanced at the decimated red helmet sitting atop the heart monitor, taking in the fissures and the way the thing was caved in around the right eye lens, the jagged edges pointing inward. His eyes dropped to the white patch of bandage he had put in place to staunch the bleeding from the cut under Jason’s eye 20 minutes ago. That could’ve been way nastier.

“Judging by the amount of Fear Toxin in his system, I doubt he would be capable of much movement.” he said, giving Damian a light but stern swat on the arm when he reached out to try and poke Jason.

“If you saw what it did to the sorry fools that crossed Scarecrow’s path this evening, the only thing you’d be doubting is Todd’s ability to tell the difference between you and something to be murdered as soon as he opens his eyes.” Damian shot back, straightening up and crossing his arms, brows furrowed under his mask.

His little face was a bit swollen; mottled with bruises and his lip is busted. The angry red of the split flesh blended into a giant ugly splotch of pink, purple and blue that stretched from his jaw, and a considerable distance up his cheek. The large bruise looked fresh, perhaps inflicted by someone with a large fist covered in kevlar and suffering intense delusions in a confined space like the batmobile

“And considering how much more skilled Todd is at attacking people than the average citizen, I say the least you would need to assure your safety is a reinforced straitjacket.” Damian continued, throwing another wary glance down at Jason.

“That’s enough Damian.”

They both turned to Dick who had previously been holding a conversation with Barbara over The Cave’s comm. He was still sitting in the swivel chair but was now facing them, looking tired but serious. He too was still in full uniform and looked even battered than Damian but still, he rose and picked up his Escrima sticks, sheathing them to his back as he approached them.

“We still have work to do. Babs just tracked down Scarecrow and his crew. She sent Steph to take them on and she’ll need backup.”

Damian only hesitated for just a few seconds before he turned to Alfred again with a frown. He shrugged but under the haughtiness of expression, he could swear there was worry.

“Call us if you need saving.”

“Worry about yourself young man.”

Damian huffed, threw one last glance at Jason’s unconscious body and turned to leave. Despite his earlier call to action, Dick hovered. He said nothing but the concern was palpable in his rigid posture, the hard line of his mouth. Alfred gave him a small, reassuring nod and with just a little bit of hesitation, Dick nodded back.

“Call us if you need anything.” He said, before hurrying after Damian.

================================

  


Despite his dismissal of Damian’s concerns, Alfred decided to cuff one of Jason’s wrists to the bed frame. He had hesitated just after setting Jason up with an IV of painkillers and ultimately made the call to restrain his opposite arm. It took a while for Fear Gas to completely wear off and he didn’t want Jason to wake up in another fit and rip the IV off.

He sat by his side for the better part of an hour, watching, waiting for any possible nasty side effects. But Jason remained under, heart rate steady and vitals good so he relocated upstairs to see to some of his regular evening chores. He couldn’t have been gone for more than fifteen minutes but when he returned to the cave, the cot was empty. The IV pole had been knocked on its side and what remained of the handcuffs he had placed around Jason’s wrist was on the floor next to it. They were bloody.

Immediately, he rushed to the comm to contact Dick but instinct stopped him at the last second, making him pause before he could even reach it. He hesitated, hovering uncertainly a few feet away from the computers before taking a deep breath and heading for the medical cabinet instead.

Armed with a flashlight, a first aid kit and some fast acting sedatives, Alfred went straight up to the attic.

He made his way up as silently as possible and paused once his feet touched the attic floor, looking around in the darkness for any sign of Jason. Carefully, he took  a few steps into the shadows, pondering the wisdom of turning on the light. Startling someone in an altered mental state was never a good idea, especially if that someone was a brutal, capable fighter who was physically much stronger than yourself and if he was right and Jason really was up here, they could be headed straight for disaster. However, if worse came to worse, at least Alfred would see him coming.  

He was about to call Jason’s name when he heard it. It was very quiet and brief, so soft he wasn’t entirely sure he really heard it. Pursing his lips, Alfred listened intently until it came again and this time he was sure he wasn’t imagining it. A sob.

He didn’t bother listening for where it came from, instead letting his feet carry him through the familiar path towards the dusty old piano.

The quivering form huddled under the keys was at once foreign and familiar; bigger, wider but the posture was exactly the same. Jason’s thick powerful limbs looked so fragile, more than they did when he was barely bigger than Damian tucked as they were, as close to his body as possible. His legs were folded against his chest, arms wrapped so tightly around his knees, his sleeves were taut against his elbows. His head was down, face hidden behind his forearms.

Relief was immediate upon seeing him there but there was something particularly hard-hitting about the sight of him, of past and present colliding messily once again here, in their little space that already held the weight of far too much. When he tried to speak, the words caught in his throat so Alfred took a deep but silent breath and shone his flashlight on Jason’s toes.

“Master Jason. Are you alright?”

Jason’s head snapped up so quick, it actually startled him. He turned the flashlight on his own face immediately, holding his other hand out in front of him in the universal non threatening gesture.

“It’s only me, it’s alright.”

It was near impossible to see what kind of expression Jason was wearing but Alfred saw his jaw working as his mouth tried and failed to make words and then,

“Alfred?”

It was barely above a whisper. Jason sounded dazed, wary but not threatened. Encouraged, he moved a little bit closer, keeping the light on his face.

“Yes. How are you feeling? Are you hurt?” he asked, keeping his voice gentle. Jason didn’t appear to react to his presence and the fact that he wasn’t shrinking away or stiffening in alarm was taken as a sign to move even closer. He stopped right beside him and slowly lowered himself to the ground to try and see how badly Jason had damaged his wrist after ripping it away from the cuff.

Before his knees could make contact with the dusty floor, Jason suddenly lunged forward and Alfred’s heart leapt in his chest, alarmed. He accidentally dropped the first aid kit. It bounced off Jason’s shoulder and broke open on the ground.

Jason barely even noticed, arms encircling Alfred’s waist and squeezing. He didn’t do it at all lightly but after the initial shock wore off and it sunk in that he wasn’t being attacked, Alfred realized that Jason’s grip did not have the ferocity of someone intending to crush him but that of someone who was afraid he would bolt or disappear without warning.

Blindsided and once again and plagued with concern, Alfred faltered unsure of what to do.

Jason’s face was buried against his stomach and after a few, tense seconds, Alfred felt the damp warmth of tears seep into his shirt. He gazed down at Jason’s dark head, wide-eyed with shock and stood there frozen until another sob, muffled by fabric but still much louder than what he’d heard earlier, echoed in the stillness of the attic.

He laid a hand on Jason’s head gently at first and then a bit more firm, carding his fingers slowly through his hair.

“Shhh. It’s alright. Shhh. I’m here.”

Suddenly there was a large hand clamped around his arm, way too tight. Alfred gasped as the fingers dug even tighter, until he was sure they would leave bruises. Remembering that he still had the flashlight in his other hand, he shone it down on Jason’s face. The beam of light hit him right in the eye but it barely fazed him. Alfred watched his pupils shrink back into pinpricks within the blues of his irises, making his eyes look huge, shiny with tears and as frightening as they were frightened.  

“Don’t leave me. Not you. Don’t. Please don’t leave.”

Alfred could feel his entire hand turning blue and impossibly, Jason’s grip grew even more vicious. He grit his teeth to keep himself from making any noise and struggled to keep his tone soothing as he said.

“I won’t.”

Jason’s stare, already unfocused appeared to glaze over further, his jaw going slack for a second. Alfred wondered if he was even seeing him still as his eyes narrowed, head tilting back further. Jason’s distant gaze aimed itself at the ceiling, irises flitting all over. Alfred could feel his chest expand and contract as his breaths came faster and couldn’t help the sharp cry that escaped when Jason grabbed onto the arm he was already abusing with his other hand, his grip just as crushing.

“It’s dark.” he gasped. “It was so dark. It was so dark and I couldn’t breathe.”

Alfred could barely move his fingers and the pain in his arm was starting to make his eyes water.

“Jas-”

“I was screaming for you too. I screamed for Bruce at first. Then I screamed for you.”

Jason was barely whispering but the words made Alfred pause, stomach dropping as if Jason had screamed them. He watched, heart wrenching painfully in his chest as Jason removed one hand from his arm to claw blindly at the air, not seeing empty space but the darkness of a closed casket.

He did it again and this time he hit Alfred in the chest. His hand lingered for a few moments before slowly sliding down, nails catching briefly against the buttons of his shirt before it fell away, flopping against his side, weakly.

“I knew eventually Bruce wasn’t going to come. But you. I hoped you would until the end. I don’t remember much after waking up but i knew i didn’t stop hoping for you.”

He had lived through tragedy after tragedy but those were probably the hardest words he had ever had to hear.

He dropped to his knees, one arm hovering awkwardly up when Jason refused to let go. Alfred didn’t care. He wrapped his free arm around Jason and tried to hold him as tightly as Jason had clung to him earlier.

Jason’s grip on him slackened and then slowly released. Pain raced up Alfred’s wrist and into his hand as the blood rushed back in but he ignored it, immediately using his freed arm to pull Jason closer.

“I’m sorry.” he whispered.

Jason barely flinched as Alfred slipped one of the sedatives he had hidden away in his back pocket and plunged the tiny needle into Jason’s side. But he definitely felt when Jason went slack as the drug took effect. Keeping his grip tight, he readjusted his hold, lifting one hand to gently rest against the back of Jason’s head.

“I’m sorry.” he whispered again. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

The words felt pathetically inadequate. Laughably small against the magnitude of all they were addressing and Alfred hated himself just a little bit more for speaking them to deaf ears. It took him  a while to notice he had begun rocking them back and forth; a gesture he had seen far too many times during his time in the army, made almost exclusively by parents as they cradled their dead or dying children in their arms. He remembered thinking that there was always something so gut-wrenchingly terrible about the futility of it, remembered thinking that no amount of comfort or gentleness was ever going to bring those children back.The realization had him halting all movement immediately, clenching his eyes shut and burying his face against  the cool leather covering Jason’s shoulder.

He didn’t bring Jason back down to the cave. Jason’s wrist was badly cut and it was sprained. From the looks of it, he really must have forcefully wrenched his hand out of the cuff. The damage was easily mended with what he had brought up with him in the first aid kit, fixed slowly and carefully under the light of his flashlight. After it was done, he hesitated for a few moments before settling against the piano, resting Jason’s head on his thigh.

He sat there for hours, watching the moonlight and the shadows and the temporary peace on Jason’s face. Between breaks of heavy, pensive silence he found himself humming; the same song broken up into pieces and sang in a haphazard order. Once or twice, he bothered actually singing the words.

“I did my best, it wasn't much.

I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch.

I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you.

And even though it all went wrong, I'll stand before the lord of song

With nothing on my tongue but hallelujah.”

====================================

He didn’t remember falling asleep but when he came to, he was still  sat on the floor with his back to the piano. Light shone in through the tiny sun roof and there was no Jason to be found. Alfred wasn’t surprised by his absence and as he looked around at the sea of white sheets draped over forgotten things, noting how different it all looked in the daylight he once again found himself wondering if the previous night had all been just a dream.

Slowly, he rolled his shoulders and stretched out his limbs trying to find all the kinks he’s gotten without disturbing them too much.

Something fell off his shoulders and landed on the floor with a muffled ‘whump’ and Alfred flinched, moving away and twisting around to see what it was.

A jacket. Tan and more than a little weathered, padded with kevlar and large enough to fit someone Bruce’s size or bigger. Alfred was sure he had buried tears on its shoulder just a handful of hours ago.

Its presence made this all feel just that much more surreal and he hesitated to touch it, wondering irrationally for a second or two if it would crumble into dust the second he did and he would finally wake up.

The leather remained solid and rough under his fingers when he picked it up and Alfred released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding as he stood, taking the jacket with him. Carefully he folded it and held it to his chest with his good arm. The one that Jason held on to still ached and Alfred discovered that his sleeve had been rolled up and cooling patches from the first aid kit had been placed on his skin.

Said first aid kit sat primly on the piano keys. There was a sizable crack on its side from when he had dropped it the night before but there was no stray gauze or bandage anywhere to be seen and the box was firmly closed, the flashlight sitting next to it.

Alfred picked them up and tucked them under his arm, pausing when he noticed the patches of color on the keys. He recognized them a second later as prints carved into the dust by fingers. He heard the melody immediately in his head before he could even process all the keys where the dust had been disturbed.

Unlike the first time Jason was taken from them, Alfred didn’t dare erase what he left behind, instead he just held Jason’s jacket tighter and turned away with a small wistful smile.

  
  
  
  


 


End file.
